Sometimes it can be really interesting to dig down in an idea and try to fit all the pieces together. Invariably they come down to us through processes of building up and breaking down, adding and editing and after awhile we have to take them on faith, because they have evolved over time and the pieces can have patches holding them together, where the whole is not quite whole.
Consider the Big Bang Theory;
When it was first discovered the light of distant galaxies is redshifted, the evident assumption was that they must be moving away, aka, doppler shift.
Though as more information came in, it became apparent that redshift increases proportional to distance in all directions, so either we must be at the exact center of the universe, or redshift must be an optical effect.
Yet the light was obviously too clear for it to be interfered with, aka, "tired light," so what was the solution?
At which point it was proposed that space itself must be expanding, because Spacetime!
Unfortunately by this time, the mathematicians had triumphed over the actual physicists, so it was accepted as truth. At least I feel inclined to blame the mathematicians.
Logically, if space expands relativitistically, the speed of light should increase, in order to remain CONSTANT!!
Remember the premise of spacetime?
Basically two metrics of space are being derived from the same intergalactic light. One based on the speed and one based on the spectrum.
Given the speed is still being treated as the denominator in this equation, or it would be a tired light theory, that would make the spectrum the numerator and we are back to basic doppler effect. Increasing distance, in stable space. The train moving down the tracks doesn't stretch the tracks and the speed of light is the tracks, in this idea. (I'm loathe to call it a theory.)
The assumption seems to be that light is like some wavy line, stuck to the surface of space, that as it stretches, becomes less wavy. What! Waves are a function of the energy propagating! Where are the applied physicists, when you need them?
Yes, there is no aether, but we can only sense them as waves when the light enters our measuring apparatuses. Which is a medium, like a lens is a form of medium. Consider refraction.
There is one way that light does redshift over distance and that is as packets, since the higher frequencies dissipate faster.
Yet that would mean we are sampling a wave front, not observing individual photons, that traveled billions of lightyears. Which means the quantization of light is a function of its absorption and measurement, not fundamental to the light itself. Which opens another very large theoretical Pandora's Box.
That this effect would compound on itself would explain the parabolic curvature in the rate, far more economically than proposing most of the energy in the universe is otherwise invisible. Ockham's razor.
It used to be that when observation didn't match prediction, the possibility the underlaying theory was falsified was at least considered, but now it seems accepted practice to just assume some enormous, otherwise invisible force of nature and all is well.
While I realize you have just spent a big hunk of your life learning all this and are not going to take some crank on the internet seriously, I will make a prediction; That if and when the James Webb does start looking at that primordial radiation, it finds it to be the light of ever further sources, shifted off the visible spectrum, not evidence of initial event or stage.
At which point, the winds of change will howl through the multiverse.
Happy New Years!
